Update 63 Preview 2: Card of Curse Cleansing

[Rincewind]

The intention is that acquiring the decks will be relatively quick, and starting to get the benefits of the system will also be relatively easy. Fully optimizing all of your gear sets is not intended to be easy nor shortcut significantly with something like the card of cleansing; rather, the card will give you an opportunity to get another chance for a particularly high-value item that you really want to replace the deck effect on.

If this mean that the cleanse is not going to be in the ddo store, then I'm all for it.
But as I said in another thread, having this cleansing in the ddo store and not being able to get it anywhere else in a reasonable way (threads with a decent price being one) is going to turn this into a gamble, almost as a gacha game.

 

[popejubal]

Does using the cleanser mess with existing effects (stone of change bonuses, reaper/mythic bonus, augments, sentience)?

 

[Rincewind]

Does using the cleanser mess with existing effects (stone of change bonuses, reaper/mythic bonus, augments, sentience)?

good question

 

[Fhrek]

Well probably 99% of the playerbase cant buy it from the AH cause it will be found only in the astral shard AH for like 1000 Astral shards. Whales will buy all of it.

Well it is a player behavior issue... but, as it starts to flood the market and people starts to optimize their farming methods and gear... it can be at reasonable prices. I hope!

 

[CBDunk]

The intention is that acquiring the decks will be relatively quick, and starting to get the benefits of the system will also be relatively easy. Fully optimizing all of your gear sets is not intended to be easy nor shortcut significantly with something like the card of cleansing; rather, the card will give you an opportunity to get another chance for a particularly high-value item that you really want to replace the deck effect on.

From what I've seen, it seems like running the four challenge quests will net enough cards for about 1.5 decks on average.

Provided your character(s) are strong enough to complete them, these quests are fairly quick runs... and different quests have different kinds of difficulty / options for completing quickly. Thus, I suspect people may run the quest(s) they are best at and skip any they have trouble with to maximize their cards.

Thus, I can easily see people getting enough decks to curse their endgame set within a day or two of release.

The cleansing card drop rate still isn't clear, but if it is going to be fairly rare then I see why the +/- threat options have still been removed. I wouldn't try cursing my endgame gear until I had at least one cleanser to take care of a detrimental effect like those... but if there AREN'T any detrimental effects then people can start cursing right away and it doesn't matter if it takes a few weeks of active play to get a cleanser to remove any useless (e.g. rune arm boosts on an orb) effects.

I'd prefer cleansing cards be relatively common and the list of effects expanded to include more potentially useless and even detrimental curses, but I think I see the balance level they are going for... it's a reasonable middle ground between the original idea and being able to 'easily' recurse items.

This will likely mean that cleansing cards will only be found on the shard exchange... which is both an upside and a downside. Down in that only 'whales' will be buying them. Up in that casual players who randomly get one will be able to sell something they'd otherwise likely never be able to use for a significant windfall.

 

[Ahpuch]

we must have some consistent way to get a remover, not just RNG. I assume that it will be added to the DDO store but it should also be purchasable in game with some type of in game 'currency'.
if you make it purchasable with plat, you will be creating the biggest and best plat sinkhole in DDO. plat might suddenly be worth something...

Sell them at a vendor for 2 million plat. That might drain the swamp

 

[Habreno]

Have some fun with this. Give us another pack to get us over 700 total Silver Flame favor, then have this be purchasable from the SF vendor with 700 favor.

 

[Ahpuch]

The intention is that acquiring the decks will be relatively quick, and starting to get the benefits of the system will also be relatively easy. Fully optimizing all of your gear sets is not intended to be easy nor shortcut significantly with something like the card of cleansing; rather, the card will give you an opportunity to get another chance for a particularly high-value item that you really want to replace the deck effect on.

It is hard to give good feedback without knowing the goals of this system. If the "easy to curse, hard to perfect" model is to support a power creep grind for the power gamers then this is a good model. If it is to raise revenue by selling cleansers in the store it may be a good model (depending on rarity and frustration). If it is a fun optional boost I don't think it works as well (too much frustration is a strong possibility) and the casuals are not going to grind enough to avoid the frustration. So the model could work for couple of goals but as we see with people's concerns here the details could be challenging on whether you alienate or enthrall that audience.

Unless the cleansing cards are going to be exceptionally rare, they obviate the need for removal of many of the 'potentially harmful' effects.

That is, with the cleansing cards I'd rather have the +/- threat effects restored. Sure, that means you could get one on a build where you don't want it, but then you can also remove it. Even the stone effect potentially has some uses,

Basically, the ability to remove unwanted curses makes them much less of a problem. It would be nice if the system could be expanded over time to include a vast array of wacky options.

If things get too wacky then no one will use the deck until they have a cleanser. I don't know if that game play should be the goal. It could be fun to have something like that but most people don't want fun, they want power. MOAR POWER! If the chance of less power is high microscopic, and cleansers are available, then cleansers simply become mandatory before use.

 

[Aldbar DDO]

Sell them at a vendor for 2 million plat. That might drain the swamp

yes. sounds about right.

 

[Guntango]

For the love of sweet baby jesus please let me buy it.

 

[Ying]

Treat Cards of Curse Cleansing the same as Bonepickers, Jeweler's Kits, and Sentience Toolkits: You can loot them in game, or you can buy them from the store.

 

[rabidfox]

Treat Cards of Curse Cleansing the same as Bonepickers, Jeweler's Kits, and Sentience Toolkits: You can loot them in game, or you can buy them from the store.

If only Jeweler's Kits actually dropped in game the way other unslotting stuff does.

 

[Griglok (Karatemack)]

Hello, everyone!

In this Preview, we're introducing a new item related to the Deck of Many Curses we previewed in Preview 1: The Card of Curse Cleansing!

This consumable item removes a Curse from the Deck of Many Curses from an item, which allows a Deck of Many Curses to be used on it again. With the launch of the Deck of Many Curses, this item will appear very rarely in any chest throughout the game.

In this Preview, Cards of Curse Cleansing can be found in the cabinet in the Test Dojo where you obtain the other Cards.

Please use this thread to discuss the Card of Curse Cleansing! (and if you'd like to talk about the Deck itself, check out that thread here.)

So, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I agree with the "please let me buy it" crowd.

On the other hand... my strategy if this goes live as-is will be to wait until I have a cleanser before applying a curse just in case it isn't the one I'd prefer. Also, despite the angst this would cause for some to wait to acquire cleansers, it would create a valuable in-game currency, which is also desirable.

Either way, this opens the door to a wider variety of curses as originally intended. It is also pretty quick work at responding to player feedback, so thanks to the dev team for that.

 

[rabidfox]

On the other hand... my strategy if this goes live as-is will be to wait until I have a cleanser before applying a curse just in case it isn't the one I'd prefer.

I'll likely apply curses to a chunk of my currently equipped endgame gear and then start cleansings afterwards to try and min/max the curses.

 

[Elfishski]

If these are freely available for sale in the store, with high droprates of cards in quests, then endgame players will have close to maxed gear sets in 3 days. That probably wouldn't achieve design goals (unless the main design goal is revenue raising, which would be transparently obnoxious).

 

[PonySoldier]

The intention is that acquiring the decks will be relatively quick, and starting to get the benefits of the system will also be relatively easy. Fully optimizing all of your gear sets is not intended to be easy nor shortcut significantly with something like the card of cleansing; rather, the card will give you an opportunity to get another chance for a particularly high-value item that you really want to replace the deck effect on.

Do we really need another Sentient Jewelpicking Bonekit mechanic?
If you get another chance only by reacquiring the item which already difficult to get (raid stuff), that's when after rolling something good the item becomes high-value.
This incentivizes players to rerun content instead of sitting at banker pressing reroll button.
Maybe it's just me, but I like the idea of having gear that very hard to reproduce.

 

[Sqrlmonger]

It's not really possible to discuss this topic without at least some rough metric of how frequently these will actually drop.

Saying "very rare" is qualitative where we need something more quantitative. Even if it's just broadly on the order of "You will roughly see 0.33 per heroic past life."

The intent is obviously that we should be encouraged to replace items that are replaceable which probably means any quest item with no mythic/reaper or only a small mythic/reaper bonus. But when you start talking about perfect mythic & reaper items from quests and raid items with mythic or reaper bonuses I think the availability should be sufficient to reasonably cover the cleansing of these items.

It shouldn't be a situation where cleansing cards are so rare you're only willing to use them on a raid item with perfect mythic/reaper bonuses.

Some clarity on what you're actually aiming for in this regard would be appreciated.

 

[CBDunk]

I'm against having cleansing available in the store. That's just another 'bone pick' type design where you either are stuck with what you have or buying from the store because they just do not drop anywhere near enough in game (I've seen exactly one after running all the IoD quests over a dozen times).

Having them drop from any chest in the game is great because it means any player can get them. A brand new first life player could get one in The Grotto and have this extremely valuable item to put up on the shard exchange.

That said, I'd prefer a drop rate which would make it ok to include curses with potentially detrimental effects (e.g. +/- threat) because active players would typically get enough cleansers to remove one or two effects per reincarnation.

It sounds like they are instead looking for ZERO potentially detrimental effects and thus cleansers dropping more along the lines of bone picks... maybe one out of every 10 reincarnations. That's not great because by the time you're able to replace something that isn't useful for the build you got it on... you've changed builds several times. That's going to make it nearly impossible to 'optimize' curses for a gear set unless you buy a bunch of cleansers for an obscene amount of astral shards.

Basically, they want cleansers to be an occasional 'nice to have' for most players.

 

[Matuse]

A great opportunity for a platinum sink. Make the cleanser purchasable with plat, but cost a huge amount. At least 3 million platinum. Give platinum a reason for people to accumulate, and heck, maybe the platinum AH might actually start seeing some use.

 

[saekee]

The cleansers will keep players maxing out all uses of the deck within a week.

Hence it may be that the deck is too easy to assemble?

How about: You can overwrite a curse on an item with a new one BUT it will cost 6x as much cards. No need for cleansers. Well you could have them still as rare drops in Saga rewards.

I think it would be funny having them appear as rare drops from purple collectable baggies.